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What Can Your Network Do for You?

By Keerti Melkote, Blog Contributor

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We are in the midst of a massive transition away from networking technologies that were designed for the 20th century when mobile, IoT and cloud did not exist. Mobile and IoT are creating the perfect storm of risks and opportunities, disrupting traditional businesses and declaring new winners.

These new technologies are forcing business and IT leaders to rethink how they invest in IT infrastructure to take advantage of the speed of innovation. While they aim to improve GenMobile's experience and enable operational efficiencies, they can't control the following market trends that have a big impact on everything from corporate real estate planning to enterprise network design.

  • Fixed real-estate investments are shifting towards digital technologies to make better use of the existing space — IoT for building automation, analytics for real-time insights into space and energy utilization, mobile for improved productivity and seamless connectivity.
  • Traditional fixed investments on voice over IP infrastructure is shifting towards support and maintenance of a wide variety of mobile voice and video solutions.
  • Investments in print and online channels for visitor and employee engagement are shifting to the delivery of rich smartphone applications. As the number one source of Internet traffic today, mobile grabs the highest attention of connected workforces across any industry.
  • Investments for traditional wide area networks (WAN) connecting sites to data centers is being augmented with the use of hybrid WAN connectivity optimized for public and private cloud connections as well as enabling guest access for customer engagement
  • End user computing itself is moving away from being a fixed cost for IT departments, as employees and guests carry their own devices – smartphones, laptops, tablets, watches – and use private and public cloud-based security platforms to self-register them onto enterprise networks.

Mobile and IoT technologies create the potential for tremendous business opportunities, but also present challenges for IT and business leaders.

 Traditionally, IT decision makers made significant capital investments to acquire networking hardware and when it was time to support new business applications, they were expected to provide another large capital outlay. Those days are long gone. IT and business leaders now need flexible purchasing and deployment options for their network infrastructures, so that they can keep up with the speed of innovation, without breaking their IT budgets.

 As leaders from different lines of business attack the problem of improving end user experience, they invest in a variety of digital platforms and applications. They need rich contextual data to measure employee productivity, utilization of workplace resources, guest engagement, and the potential business impact of IoT devices in smart buildings. Without fully understanding the success or failure metrics for GenMobile's experience at work, businesses are flying blind as they try to improve their operations and invest in additional IT services.

It's time to think of your Infrastructure as a Platform

The Aruba Mobile First Platform is designed to address these business and IT challenges, acting as the intelligent software layer between the network infrastructure components and third-party IT services and business and end user-facing applications.

It is developer-ready to enable innovation at the speed of the ecosystem – instead of a single vendor – with industry leading technology partners and app developers working together to create innovative solutions that elevate the customer experience. With easy to consume software components, the Aruba Mobile First Platform and its ecosystem partners offer everything from wireless connectivity to secure device onboarding, to location-based services.

Flexible consumption models for our platform components address the need to acquire new Aruba solutions without breaking the budget. A variety of network-as-a-service options help minimize the total up-front cost, convert capital expenditures to OpEx, and rely on our partners' expertise to perform design, installation, monitoring, and support.

If you want to get more details about the latest within the Aruba Mobile First Platform, read the solution overview. I look forward to your comments.